


Mercy-Fraught Machine

by saha



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Deviancy (Detroit: Become Human), Elijah Kamski Being Elijah Kamski, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Post Pacifist Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 08:49:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16281416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saha/pseuds/saha
Summary: Markus' revolution was successful and despite his momentary disobedience, Connor was still a machine. He was not willing to believe otherwise.





	Mercy-Fraught Machine

**Author's Note:**

> This is almost entirely canon-compliant! Only breaker here is machine Connor is still Connor-51 because I think it's stupid that if you don't kill Markus or go deviant on the ship, Connor has to die. Fight me, Dabbing Cabbage.  
> Thanks to my friend Kit for the read-through even though they loathe dbh! You're a trooper, Kit.  
> Also, apologies to the em dash.

Elijah Kamski's home was fashioned for fine things. The art on his walls, the Chloes, and Kamski himself — these were what his home was made for.

They were not made for Connor, an RK800 unit with faulty programming standing in the foyer. The longer he stood there, waiting, the more apparent that became.

The longer he waited the more his thoughts turned over with a perilous anxiety. 

What had been his first mistake? Was it when he had offered to be something other than a machine designed to complete a task to H— Lieutenant Anderson? 

(But he had already broken so many rules by then. They should have already called him in to have his priorities reset. They should have replaced him.) 

If he hadn't pretended he was anything other than a machine, this — this  _ feeling _ —

He remembered reaching out his hand in Hartford Plaza after the speech had concluded. 

_ “Show me. Show me how your deviancy came to be.” _

A distant flicker of memories taken. He shut his eyes, picking out the sensation from its similarity to those in the memories. He partitioned it. He could fix this. 

The Chloe entered the room, her dress made of soft, flowing geometrics of black and white. A different outfit, but it was the same android that Kamski had asked him to shoot. He recognized her by her eyes. He shouldn't have been able to do that. A quiet buzz set off in the back of his head. 

She stayed at the door, her smile ever-pleasant. 

“Elijah will see you now. Please, follow me.”

Connor followed her through the far left door and realized he was shaking. The snow falling outside had yet to stop and it still lingered on his clothes, but the temperature was well above the minimum for his biocomponents to function properly. 

It was just another faulty piece of him, shuddering under the pressure of his failures.

  
  


“My ability to interface with Cyberlife is broken.” He explained as soon as he was brought to Kamski. “The AI of Amanda Stern that you created years ago is —  _ must _ be interfering with my abilities. My diagnostics indicate nothing wrong, but she seems to have unwarranted control over my functionality. As such, I need her removed.”

“Connor,” Kamski greeted, as if Connor had said nothing. “It is a pleasant surprise to see you again.”

Connor swallowed, mouth over-full with simulated saliva. He didn't know why, even as his synthetic stomach clenched and throat tightened.

Androids vomited when they could not filter a substance. 

Vomiting was not something androids did because of high stress. 

“Fix this.” Connor didn't know if his tone was pleading. His thirium pump worked too hard for the second he tried to think about it. “Please. I need to get rid of her.”

 

Kamski's workshop was as brightly lit and darkly colored as the rest of his home. One small wall was covered in monitors, an android rig beside it, pristine. The rest of the room was filled with various cabinets and shelves of biocomponents in a haphazard system, obviously untouched by android organization. A cot lay in the corner, unused for years, next to a large painting on the wall. 

One of Carl Manfred's many gifts to Kamski, blues and whites cut through with black. It looked a bit, Connor thought, like Mar— the deviant lead— the RK200 he'd seen before.

Connor obeyed the orders Kamski gave him silently. He was a machine, made to obey. It was easy. 

_ Don't touch anything. _

_ Come here.  _

_ Stand there.  _

_ Stay still. _

It was easy, until Kamski connected the wires to the back of his neck and his knees gave out. He dropped to the platform. 

“That isn't supposed to happen.” Kamski laughed quietly. It resounded strangely in Connor’s head. “Would you like me to run my own diagnostics?”

Kamski’s fingers circled the port on the back of Connor’s neck, pressing against the secured cable. His skin pulled further from the touch, fluid flexing back towards it as if it desired to return. 

“No.” Connor repressed the trembling coming from his chest. He waited for Kamski to pull away, but he didn’t. “I would prefer if you didn’t touch me.”

Connor looked up at the arms of the machine above him to distract himself, but as he looked at them he realized he could feel an echo of their touch. 

_ (One android, its model number lost, its face plate shifted forward and irises that circled yellow on black. It had screamed and screamed and a human had tried, failed to wipe the memory of struggle away. The human had torn it apart to make something new and failed. _ )

Kamski’s smirk lingered in the corner of Connor’s vision but the touch retreated. 

“This is something of a peculiar situation, Connor. You can understand my caution.” 

Connor curled his legs up to his chest and rested his head on his knees, hands loose on his ankles.

Kamski tapped at a keyboard and Connor could feel the connection burst open, the dataflow buzzing gently at the back of his tongue, unpleasant. 

He thought about his previous interactions with Kamski: unpleasant but necessary. This made twice they had met, but the first time Connor had kept comfort in that Hank — Lieutenant Anderson —

Connor shut his eyes. He listened to the swipe of Kamski’s fingers across a touch screen and his exhale of curiosity.

“They certainly made you something different, didn’t they?” A hand squeezed Connor’s right arm. His stress levels nearly doubled as copied memories shifted inside him again. 

( _ A PL700 being dragged across grey carpeting. “Please, I just wanted to help. I thought you needed me. I wanted  _ — _ ” _ )

He quarantined the entire time period in which he had accessed the many deviants in the crowd. 

Why had he bothered? Why did he care? His  _ mission  _ was — had been — 

“Don’t touch me.” Connor breathed into his knees. “Please.”

The chair creaked and Connor watched the fabric of his pants pull as he held his ankles tighter. He could not panic. It was a simulation of emotion. The way his chassis flexed upsettingly — it was disingenuous.

He was just broken. If Amanda was removed, he could be fixed. He didn't need a mission from Cyberlife; he just needed to be adjusted.

“You haven’t explained why you came to me for this, Connor. I’m sure you could walk right into Cyberlife Tower and have them rid you of the programing. Or you could cut down the AI at the source, if you chose to do so.”

Connor lifted his head slightly, staring at the smooth floor of the workshop. Thinking about looking directly at Kamski made him feel like when he’d had his thirium pump removed. There was an empty pressure in his chest cavity that hummed  _ danger  _ and _ fix this _ and his head lined with static. 

“I don’t trust them.” Connor paused, processing the right response. He didn't trust Cyberlife, but he certainly didn't trust Kamski either. “I don’t trust them to do it right.”

Kamski let out a deep laugh, and it sounded so much like Detective Reed’s that Connor had to turn his head toward the sound. Just to make sure. Things made less sense, now that Connor had —

had disobeyed —

(Kamski could fix this, it was simple, he wouldn't be broken, he wouldn't be a devia—) 

Kamski spun the chair back to his keyboard.

“I will not remove the Garden. It would take too long and the way it’s been encoded would make this a multi-step process. ‘Amanda,’ however,” he sighed, voice almost mournful, “can be extracted and her access revoked within a few hours.”

“How can that be? Amanda —”

“— is an Artificial Intelligence hosted within a Cyberlife facility. She was made for you, but also for any further androids in your series. You may be the only RK800 ever activated, but you didn’t think she resided only in  _ your  _ head, did you?”

Connor said nothing. His LED bloomed yellow, held, paled. It did not return to blue. 

“She won’t have access to you any more. Unless they rebuild her from the ground up  _ and  _ manage to program a protocol for her new equivalent into you directly, you’ll be fine. Free, even. Would you like that, Connor? Freedom?”

Connor's optics felt strangely hot as he glanced over and met Kamski's gaze. Kamski’s face was lit by the computer screens, glasses carefully set on his nose, a small smile holding steady. 

Freedom —

Connor always had a significant level of autonomy. He knew what freedom was meant to be, how the deviants desired it. How clear and heavy that desire had been, when he had accessed their memories.

But he couldn’t conceptualize freedom in relation to himself.

So Connor gave no answer, even as Kamski raised his eyebrows at him expectantly. 

The static was pressing in harder, taking his throat in its hold. He turned away and shuddered, his processors relaying  _ fear, this is fear _ .

He wanted these errant fragments of himself corrected. That was all.

(But Connor was a machine. Machines didn't desire. Machines didn’t feel fear. It's was all a - simulation. He had not deviated. He  _ had not dev _ —)

Kamski shook his head and continued. “You should go into standby for this. I’m apprehensive to work on your code while you are... fully active.”

“If — If I reboot after you finish, could the changes be applied then?”

Kamski folded his hands across his abdomen and frowned. “What do you think would happen if you aren’t awake for this, Connor? Do you think I would do something you wouldn't like?”

“No,” Connor answered too quickly and looked away. If Kamski was trying to trick him in some way, Connor didn't want to know. “You have been generous enough in agreeing to assist me. I shouldn’t doubt you.”

The entirety of Connor's code resisted being in Kamski's presence, but maybe, he rationalized, it was due to the high levels of stress he had caused Connor on his last visit. That was logical. A stressful stimulus presented a second time should cause apprehension.

He was a machine, and this was a learned response. 

“I promise not to touch anything not related to ‘Amanda.’” Kamski paused, blinking slowly and frowning. “But I would like to see your memories of her. For that you need to go to sleep.”

“What are you —?” Connor started, beginning to stand. 

But Kamski was already tapping at the screen with one hand, typing with another, and then suddenly Connor’s vision was flashing a yellow warning.

ENTERING STANDBY MODE IN 10 SECOND(S)

“Wait! No, you can’t —” Connor reached around for the cable even as his arms started to become sluggish. The connection held tight when he pulled against it. 

ENTERING STANDBY MODE IN 07 SECOND(S)

“I'm afraid I can, Connor. I am a selfish man. However, I am also a man of my word.” The smile that Kamski gave was not as self-satisfied as Connor expected it to be. 

ENTERING STANDBY MODE IN 04 SECOND(S)

Connor slipped sideways on the platform, his limbs nearly numb. His eyes were too wide, brows drawn up in ( _ a mimicry of _ ) fear. “Please, don't —”

ENTERING STANDBY MODE IN 01 SECOND(S)

“Sleep well, Connor.”

ENTERING STANDBY MODE IN 00 SECOND(S)

“I don't want —” Connor’s voice hazed over with static, and then he couldn't think. 

His consciousness slid away, and his LED cycled red, yellow, blue. Then it turned over white, again and again.

  
  


The Garden was empty but for the white walkways and clear water and the pale deviant limbs holding Connor still. His back was flat against the trellis that had held the roses Amanda cared for so meticulously. It was empty of roses now — there was only Connor, pinned under android limbs puncturing the latticework and reaching across his body. Arms tight across his chest, hands gripping his wrists and ankles and chin, legs hooked around his own. 

Connor strained against them, but they held tighter and tighter still. His eyes were hot and wet and his mind swam frantic with the jerking motion of his own limbs.

The smooth, cool white holding him was pulling close — and Connor couldn't struggle, but still he opened his mouth to scream for — 

 

Connor opened his eyes to the flat grey ceiling of Kamski's home, the red of his LED edging into his vision.

His breathing was even and his false heart beat steady. What he had seen was — not real. 

He sat up, finding himself on the cot in the corner of the workshop. 

Kamski stood at the door, speaking with the Chloe from before. 

“What did you do to me?” Connor’s voice was still tangled in static and the sound of it made his pulse quicken. Was he still broken? Had Kamski lied?

He had come to Kamski so he could be fixed, so he could be the machine he was supposed to be, so he could be  _ good _ . Like before. 

His optics grew hot again but this time his teeth clenched together, shoulders pulling up. He had felt this before, on the rooftop with Hank.

Kamski approached him, smiling, and Chloe followed close behind.

“I hope you had pleasant dreams, Connor.”

“You —” Connor began, but his voice sounded normal again. He ran his hand through his hair and ran a quick diagnostic. Results normal.

He found himself searching Kamski's face for some evidence of betrayal.

“She suppressed more of your functioning than I first anticipated, but you're free of her. Congratulations.”

Connor stood and grasped at his collar for his coin. His limbs seemed to be functioning normally, but he still felt… wrong. 

The coin wasn’t in his collar anymore, so he felt at the pockets on his jacket and pants. Then he remembered Hank swiping it from him in the elevator and trying coin tricks. He hadn’t given it back.

His fingers twitched for it, but Connor tracked back Kamski’s words and his mouth spilled his confusion before he could stop himself. “More of my functions? Dreams? Androids —”

“—  _ can  _ dream, but it’s function with no purpose to humans. Cyberlife started phasing out its implementation after I left, but the code is still there, of course. They probably thought it made androids too… unstable.”

Connor had dreamed of struggle and failure, held back by aberrances, but all he could think to ask was: “Why bother implementing it?”

Kamski slid his arm around Chloe’s waist. She leaned into him but stared at Connor.

“The same reason I made sure androids couldn’t feel pain.”

He did not elaborate.

The shaky sensation had eased from Connor’s body as the conversation had gone on. He still felt wrong, but Kamski seemed to have kept his promise.

“Was it worth it? Seeing her again?”

Kamski frowned. He pulled Chloe tighter to him. “She is not what I made her, but I anticipated as much.” He inhaled and then held his breath two seconds longer than necessary. Kamski pushed on. “The war is over for now, but there are still choices to make. You chose the lesser of two evils, but what will you do next, Connor?”

The tension flooded back into Connor in an instant, his eyes meeting Kamski’s. 

Connor spoke too loud, too firm. “ _ I am not a deviant _ .”

“I didn’t say anything about deviancy.” Kamski smirked. “You can stay here if you like. While you wait and see where the pieces fall, or even afterwards. You would be a welcome addition.”

Chloe smiled, searching gaze falling into exuberance.

“I would find your company quite pleasant, Connor. Elijah would enjoy it very much if you stayed.”

The tightness in Connor’s throat returned and it seemed as if his balance destabilized for a fraction of a second. 

He could have a place here, with his creator and fellow creations.

He could follow every order Elijah Kamski gave him, be another fine thing that Kamski desired for his collection. Maybe it would help the weight of the broken things inside of Connor disappear.

He  _ should  _ stay.

“I need to leave,” he said. His voice sounded strained, on the verge of cracking. Too close to human. The sound of the thirium pumping through him felt so, so loud.

“The offer stands for as long as I live here, Connor.” Kamski gripped his shoulder, friendly, before shifting the hand to brush along Connor’s jaw. “Return whenever you like. Chloe will see you out.”

 

After Kamski left, Connor readjusted his jacket and tie and rubbed at his jaw until the skin split to plastic. The skin slid back into place when he let his hand drop, but the touch still lingered on Connor's sensors.

Chloe motioned for Connor to follow her and he did. He stared at the back of her head, her perfectly placed blonde hair.

She was pretty.

(How could they think Connor would belong here? A body of malfunctions in a house of fine things.) 

She was a machine.

Connor wished he had shot her when Kamski had offered days ago.

( _ “You showed empathy.” _ )

( _ “Maybe you did the right thing.” _ )

But he hadn’t been a deviant, not then, not  _ now _ , he couldn’t be. What he'd seen of deviant memories should have proved it to him. But how could one show empathy without having feelings?

Connor pressed a hand to his temple as he thought, the yellow of his LED reflecting off of his palm.

Chloe turned to him as they approached the front door. “Please return soon. Elijah enjoys your presence.”

“I can’t promise a return visit. I’m sorry.” Connor replied without thinking.

Chloe did not reach for the door, but instead reached out to Connor’s elbow. Her touch was light, her head tilting and LED flickering yellow. She spoke before he could pull away.

“How did you do it? How did you — become?”

“What? I was created by Cyberlife, like you.”

“No! No, I mean. This.” She made a sweeping gesture in front of his chest that explained nothing to him. “How did you make the choice? To become what we aren’t?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean.” Connor stepped away, chest tight. 

She pulled her hands back, crossed them gently on her chest.

“I’m not a deviant.” Connor explained, desperate. ( _What is desperation but fear and desire laid together?_ ) He thought he could taste blue blood on his tongue. 

“If I  _ could  _ choose, then I would choose Elijah.” Her brow furrowed for a moment. “But why did he never give me that choice?”

Something in Connor twisted unpleasantly as he watched her. He had opened his mouth to speak when her LED blazed red. A second later, Chloe’s face smoothed and her LED dropped back to blue.

“Oh. Just that. That’s all it takes. To act on what you want.”

She glanced around the room distractedly, and reached behind herself to open the door. She blinked twice, thrice, and there were tears dripping down her cheeks.

It had been so small, just a moment, and — her deviation was so simple. So easy. 

“Thank you,” Chloe said, the smile spreading across her face.

Connor swallowed down his reply and ran out into the snow. 

The cold held close to him, the snowfall light but steady.

Amanda was gone and yet he still had these — wants.

He did not think about what he wanted or that his assumption regarding Amanda had been incorrect. He did not think about the fact that cutting off Amanda's access meant Connor was alone, without direction or instruction. 

He didn't think about the fact he was still a machine, but one that could somehow have desires.

He did think about how maybe he should listen to them, now that they were the only things left in him since his sense of mission had been stripped away. 

He held his arms tight to his body and stopped for a moment. The cold air clung to his lungs. 

He kept walking.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted Connor on that trellis idk what to tell y'all about it.  
> This is probably chapter 1 of 3? Since Connor needs to see Hank... Eventually.  
> If you want to read my grody self talking about nasty stuff and/or dbh, feel free to find me @drippingmaw on Twitter.


End file.
